Lyrical, witty, and elegiac, the twenty-five essays in NEARER show the imagination at work and play amid the ambiguities, consternations, and beauties of the world. They range in subject matter from confrontations with magnitude (God, death, and the physical universe) to examinations of the compact, coiled insistences to be found in the ordinary and the local-what John Updike refers to as "the small answer of a texture." There are meditations on the appeals and the pitfalls of celebrity, the strange and complex nature of memorials, the threat of creeping fraudulence in personal and professional life, the place and possibility of faith, and the damage that settling for "whatever" can do. "Getting Known," "My Animal Instincts," and "In So Many Words" have been named Notable Essays in the Best American Essays series.About the AuthorIn addition to NEARER, Arthur Saltzman's previous books include the collection of essays OBJECTS AND EMPATHY (2001, winner of the First Series Creative Nonfiction Award) and six critical studies of literature and writers. Recognitions for his writing include the 2005 Columbia Nonfiction Award, the 2003 Victor J. Emmett Memorial Essay Award (from MIDWEST QUARTERLY), the 2002 NEBRASKA REVIEW Creative Nonfiction Award, and the inaugural Ames Memorial Essay Award (from LITERAL LATTE). He is currently a Professor of English at Missouri Southern State University